I remember the birth of the birth control pill much like many might remember Kennedy’s assassination or the Challenger blowing up. No, I wasn’t ready for birth control, but my mom sure was and as the oldest, I was deeply sensitive to her frustrations as a being a housewife who was frequently pregnant. My mom had gone to college and chosen one of the three paths available for women who were educated:  secretary, nurse or teacher. She was a teacher who had to quit her job when she was pregnant with me because showing might tell the students that she’d been up to something.  As the oldest, I must have been her confidant because I do remember her in the living room of our split level in Rockville, Maryland, sun streaming onto the wood floors,  saying how happy she was that she could just take a pill and not have kids anymore. Having some symptoms of eldest daughter syndrome at a young age, I shared her joy.

To quote Janis Joplin, my mom was searching for a life very different than what she had known. It was common for girls to look at their future in horror back then–marriage and children. That’s it. My mom was a loving mother, but being a homemaker bored her and I could sense it.

Wanting to control family size is nothing new. Some of the earliest records from ancient Egypt contain recipes for birth control, primarily soaking lint in substances such as honey and acacia leaves putting it you know where. Nursing for many years was also a suggested method. The techniques, put forth by female doctors and midwives, were for avoiding overpopulation and keeping women beautiful. The later was the most important. Interestingly enough, scientists today link an increased biological age to each pregnancy a woman endures.

The ancient Greeks had different approaches from eating pomegranate seeds (hello Persephone, you had no choice but to eat that seed), infanticide and encouraging sex outside of marriage with someone of your own sex. This may seem shocking now, but they were very aware that again, the right family size was best for society.

Women in Aztec societies ate wild yams as birth control and Native Americans used it as a tea to prevent contraception. (Note: don’t try this at home. The Pill much improves the safety and effectiveness of this home remedy.) This plant contains one of the first substances studied as a possible birth control pill ingredient.

A hundred years ago, working with plant steroids was a large push in scientific research, with numerous substances isolated from plants such as soybeans. One, cortisol and cortisol related compounds, was effective in treating rheumatoid arthritis and was hailed as a miracle cure in the 1940s. Scientists were sure that other modified steroids would provide other miracle cures, including ability to control ovulation.

The birth control pill chemically manipulates a person’s natural sex hormones. Sex hormones are steroids with a somewhat simple structure, many of them being almost identical and similar to the structure of cholesterol. The basic secret behind the birth control pill is progesterone. This hormone is secreted during pregnancy to prevent ovulation and thicken the uterus. This tells the body to prepare for pregnancy and to stop further ovulation- no eggs are prepared to be released.

Progesterone alone is not a great birth control pill material. It breaks down in the stomach too quickly. Scientists set about to modify progesterone so that it could survive being taken as a pill.

Why were people so keen on a birth control pill? For one thing, public health measures including sanitation, vaccines, and antibiotics resulted in fewer childhood deaths. As a result, family size was burgeoning, and children were becoming a financial burden. There were many reasons given for developing the birth control pill : to control population, to free women to enjoy sex, and to help people out of poverty. Many people working on and funding he perfect birth control formula  the noble goal of making sure that every person born was wanted and had a chance in life. They knew, as we do now, too many children too close together depletes the mother who is more likely to have complications in childbirth with subsequent pregnancies.  In some cases, women were fitted with IUDs to ”correct uterine problems.” Although often illegal, diaphragms were also women-centric birth control tools. However, the idea of a discretely taken medication which didn’t require insertion of a foreign object, an idea as old as time, was appealing

Katharine McCormick worked in conjunction with Gregory Pincus to find the ideal hormone. She provided funds to Pincus, an animal reproductive biologist, searching for the perfect progesterone like molecule. He tested several forms of progesterone on lab animals in a ramshackle lab in Massachusetts

When it was time for human trails, ethical and practical dilemmas raised their ugly heads. Finding test subjects wasn’t easy. One of the goals was to have ovulating and intelligent women who could be relied on to carry out the instructions to take the medication each day. It wasn’t so easy to find healthy people who wanted to take a new medication, especially when birth control still had a stigma for some.

Women in Puerto Rico stepped up to the task. Many of them thought there was no escape from poverty if they had more than a couple children. Abortion was legal fairly common in Puerto Rico. Many women from the mainland went there to have a “San Juan weekend.”  A pill was a better alternative. The trials were successful in preventing pregnancy, however, shady, in that the women who volunteered were not clearly informed that this was an experimental drug not previously tested on humans! In fact, one of the people involved in setting up the trial was on a mission to sterilize woman in Puerto Rico because he saw them as unfit. I can look back at this time and see why people can be afraid of a new medication. Thankfully, some guidelines have been put into place including informed consent. (Hopefully, these won’t be tossed out.)

Another set of patients was found at the Worcester State Hospital for the Chronically Ill, a mental asylum. Many of the women here were suffering from abuse and domestic conditions that were not bearable. Even men there were given the prototype pill to see how men reacted. These trails were a flop because no one was having sex.

The development of the Pill can fill a book. A formulation containing Norethynodrel and dubbed Enovid was developed. It was eventually called The Pill. Selling the idea to religious and social groups was a struggle. Some called it un-natural, and others compared it to permitting sexual gluttony, like being able to constantly eat cake. People still considered talking about birth control to be “porn” as shown in this comic where the woman has not used birth control but her children are naked inside the home, showing how anything can be called porn.

The first woman take The Pill, before it gained FDA approval, was not a poverty stricken over-worked mother but a well-to do white woman, Sue Dixson Searle, daughter of the Searle family, whose pharmaceutical business developed the formulation.  After two closely spaced babies, she decided she wanted a break and was happy to be “a pioneer.”  She lived to 91, dying recently in 2022, after being an enthusiastic patron of art of public lands in the Chicago area and a mother to three and great grandmother to many.  It must have been a disappointment to those who saw birth control as a means to reduce “undesirables” in the population, but the reason Dixson took the Pill harkens back to birth control in ancient Egypt—she wanted to be happy.

On Oct 1, 1957, the Pill was offered clandestinely to women since birth control was still a felony in 17 states.

The Pill was approved by the FDA May 6, 1960.

By 1965, more than 6.5 million women were taking the Pill. In 1963 the Dial Pak was introduced.

Slowly laws against contraception fell, and it was fully legalized in 1972.

 In 2023, a non-prescription alternative, the OPill was approved for purchase.

As for my mom, she stopped having babies and went back to work as a teacher and she and my dad resumed an active social life. People just want to be happy and limiting family size to your individual choice can make it easier.  But who knows, laws restricting its use may arise again.

The two books in the center of this snapshot of part of my messy bookcase were sources for this blog.